


mellitus

by ndnickerson



Series: Rain on a Tin Roof [7]
Category: Nancy Drew - Keene
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Honeymoon, Jealousy, Married Couple, Married Sex, Possessive Behavior, Resolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 15:21:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ndnickerson/pseuds/ndnickerson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nancy and Ned's honeymoon has an unwelcome interruption.</p>
            </blockquote>





	mellitus

She's all in gold.

From the day she left Frank, there had never been any talk of taking a break, and having found her again, he can't get enough of her. There are enough complications in their lives, Samantha and his work and nights they were too tired to do anything other than fall into bed, spooning into each other before succumbing to exhaustion. He always has good dreams with the sweet scent of her filling him, the smooth warm curve of her as she breathes against his embrace.

Three days on a beach and she's all smooth tanned legs and sun-bleached hair. At home she won't sleep naked, always afraid Sam will have a nightmare and crawl into bed with her, so this, waking to feel the press of her so near him, every morning, no alarm and no rushing to the office, meeting his touch with the open fall of her waiting thighs and the tranquil blue adoration of her gaze, this is heaven.

She wears butter-gold eyelet cotton, sheer black mesh and stretched crimson lace, deep midnight-blue silk and cream satin. For their honeymoon, most of the time, she wears nothing at all. The butter-gold eyelet cotton is in a clumsy pile at the foot of the bed and her cheek is nestled into the pillow, her hair falling over her blushed lips, eyes closed against the sunlight. He can feel her rising, the change in her breath as she senses him and slowly wakes, but he can't stop staring at her. It can't be true. She can't be true. This can't be real.

"Ned," she breathes, her hand twitching slowly to her face, where she shoves back her hair and blinks awake, his diamond flashing on her finger.

He holds an irrational fear that one morning she'll momentarily forget whose bed she's in and whose arms hold her, and the name she whispers won't be his, but that fear has been unfounded so far, and he rewards her with a grin and the brush of his fingertips over her bare hip. For him, for the longest time, on waking all he could think of was her name, all he can think of is her name. Regardless of what sprawled damaged girl shared his bed in the sunlit glare of morning.

"I love you."

He's counted the number of times they've had sex, somewhere, in the back of his head. The number of times she's spent the entire night over at his place, the times they've only been able to steal a few hours together, the few sweetly sharp times in hotel beds and the times Sam has bleated a cry from her Disney-princess bed, making Nancy start, her fingertips trailing over his bare chest as she swept the covers back and groped for a robe, slippers, her daughter. He's counted the times she's screamed, and the number of times he's been able to feel her shake and clench against him in the true proof of her release. He knows the days she's talked to Frank because she is insistent those nights, abstracted, forceful, and she comes immediately or after interminable hours while his knuckles whiten on the headboard and he grits his teeth in the effort to hold back, in wait for her release.

"I love you."

Her nails at the back of his neck, her teeth grazing his collarbone, her thigh thrown across his hips. He finds her breast and she finds him ready, and he catches her grin. One long drunken insecure evening he'd made her tell him how much she loved him, needed him, wanted him, how much better he was than Frank, how he made her _feel,_ how he made her _come_. He'd been so drunk that when he'd been eating her out, her slick hot flesh had burned like scotch on his tongue and she hadn't stopped murmuring reassurance until his head was cradled on her breast, her fingers running through his hair, and he'd been shaking, because sometimes, sometimes, hearing her say it still isn't quite enough. Being inside her is enough but only because the sun rises and falls with her breath, with her cries, with the push of her hips up against his and the crease in her eyelids, the furrow of her brow, and he could forget everything else because in those moments she _became_everything, _everything,_ and he couldn't feel anything beyond her.

She's always wet, she's always wet for him, beautiful and perfect, God, the way they just fit, it's like she plugs into everything, everything that makes him high, incoherent, hard. He can't imagine how Frank managed to fuck this up, how he never felt her go tight and desperate against him. But in the confines of that cold bed, that shotgun marriage bed, she'd never come and Ned is insanely selfishly jealously glad of it. Countless slow dreams of pale desire and he learned things, flutters of his fingertips that make her shake, positions that make her scream into his shoulder, the pillow, his stifling palm.

Her first honeymoon she spent pregnant, tense, unsure and afraid, unsatisfied. This honeymoon, she comes every time, every fucking time and he almost has friction burns on his cock, and he dreads going back to their lives because he practically has an erection every hour on the hour, and she's been only too glad to scratch that itch. 

He loves the way she tilts her head back, her brow creasing, whimpering when their hips are flush, tight and matched. She's wet as holy fuck, slick and tight, despite Sam and three years of marriage to a man who only had sex with her when there was nothing either of them could do to avoid it. She rides, the way she rides, slow and sinuous, breathing out on the downstroke, his fingers just resting on her hips while he stares up at her. It's right, it feels so right and he closes his eyes and thanks God for the thousandth time that he never rode bareback with anyone but her. He groans when she leans down, shoving her knees apart, shifting the angle of his cock between her thighs, brushing soft glancing kisses over his brow, his cheekbones, the tip of his nose. She moans when his mouth opens under hers, when he buries his hands in her hair and darts his tongue fast against hers, slanting and forcing, shifting under her. Usually he can't come fast enough, but now, when the days move so slow, the air hanging still and hot and golden around them, punctuated only by calls to her daughter and sticky umbrella-laden cocktails with tourist-shtick names, he likes it best when she comes slow, pulling back whenever he feels her quickening, and they move as one, one will, one insistent desire. The taste of that release is rare and sweet, and he can't move after, he can barely breathe.

He knows how her breath changes, how she starts gasping, and he digs his nails against the small of her back and breaks at the exact same fucking time she comes, and she screams and he promises her the moon, every single fucking star, everything she's ever wanted, in a language only they share, only here, only when she's arched and frantic and his heart is working like a piston and the wet kiss of her flesh against his cock is the answer to every prayer he's ever breathed.

She glows, after, panting, knees tucked up and thighs still damp, blinking slow, lashes still dark against the deepening tan of her skin. She reaches over, palm open, looping her arm around his shoulders, drawing him in close, her lips in a chaste closed kiss against the hollow of his throat.

"I wish we never had to leave."

He can't bear to open his eyes. His senses are still burning from the overload of her. "We don't," he murmurs, swallowing against his dry throat, groping blindly until his fingertips find the warm silk of her hair. "We'll just have Carson put Sam on a plane, and we'll live here, in some little beach hut. Some little soundproofed beach hut."

She chuckles, her breath hot against his skin. "I'll solve mysteries in exchange for drinks and you can teach Sam how to surf."

Her nipples are hard dusky points against his chest and when he finally opens his eyes again, everything he can see, every smooth trace of her hair against his skin and every inch of her welcoming flesh, is all in gold.

\--

It's forty degrees colder in Chicago and they keep interrupting themselves through the unpacking. She wants the house in order for when Sam finally comes back to them, and Sam's room is in apple-pie order, a gauze-curtained canopied bed and powder-pink walls and a shelf ready and waiting for her impressive doll collection. It's the rest of the house they can't get through. He walks in to ask her where he should put the dishes and they end up having sex on the kitchen table, the wood cold against her ass, his hands snaking under her shirt to find her breasts.

In this bed, christened and christened over again, the same bed that has felt their screams and rapid shaking thrusts time and time again, they sleep naked for the last time, the last night before their third returns and she has to muffle her screams again. In their sleep they lace fingers, share wet half-kisses, shift and slowly grind against each other, and when his cock is hard enough to wake him he slowly rolls her onto her back and kneels between her open legs, and he kisses each nipple wet and slow before urging her thighs apart. She makes wordless pleading moans, her eyes fluttering open to gleam in the dark as her fingers wrap around his cock and gently lead him into position, pressing up to meet him. He slides into her, matching the gentle weight of his thrusts to her breath, and when the last inch of him is wet and hilt-tight against the hot press of her, he groans and shoves her knees back, fucking her until she's powerless to do anything but come.

He's exhausted. It's the best exhaustion he's felt in years.

Their bedroom is almost in order. He needs to install a lock on the door, because the thought of Samantha inadvertently jump-starting her sex education through live example scares him. All her lingerie is here, all his jeans, the framed wedding portrait they'd received on return from their honeymoon, dressers and sneakers and matched lamps. The kitchen is a disaster of epic proportions, assorted blender and food processor parts all thrown together in cardboard boxes, baby plates and sippy cups, paper plates and inherited china.

It's three o'clock in the morning. Their bed smells of sex and she shifts in her sleep, nestling deeper against her pillow, her hair moving against his lips. Her breast is bare and his palm finds it blindly, cupping its weight, and she makes a soft sigh.

Then he's jerking awake, in the warm darkness of the bed they share, his ears ringing.

He's so tired he can barely move. They're spooned up tight and her nipple moves against his palm every time she takes a breath and he's just beginning to feel that fine line, between succumbing to his exhaustion and letting the low hot desire bloom like fire in his belly.

The knock that woke him, the sound of a fist banging hard against the glass of the front door, rings through the house again and his eyes snap open, the shock washing away the haze of arousal. She starts against him but does not rise so far as waking, not until he draws away from her and the cold swirls in to replace him, and she rolls onto her back, fingertips sliding over the sheet as she reaches for him.

"Ned," she mumbles, half-aware. But she gasps in shock when the knock comes again.

"Stay here," he says, low under his breath, finding the dial to the bedside safe from memory, loading the gun by feel alone. "I'll be back."

\--

He's known this was going to happen. He could feel it in the back of his mind, lingering like a muscle he's held tensed so long that he can no longer remember what it felt like to be otherwise.

There's a silhouette on the other side of the door when he flips the porch light on. The gun's in his back pocket, safety on. Ned's in jeans, his feet and chest bare.

He doesn't want to touch the doorknob.

It's ridiculous but he doesn't really care. It's three o'clock in the morning and he's been back from his honeymoon for less than a day and he doesn't want to deal with it. He wants to crawl back into bed and hold his wife. His wife.

The silhouette is weaving, back and forth, weight shifting, but the knock doesn't sound again. He's waiting.

Ned's thumb finds the wedding band on his left hand and worries it a few times before he takes a deep breath and unlocks the door.

Frank looks like hell but Ned expects that. He's in the remains of a suit, after unbuttoning and unknotting, breathing through his mouth, and if he wasn't this drunk his eyes wouldn't be this hard or this clear.

For a minute neither of them speak. Frank's looking at a point past Ned's left hip.

"Let me talk to her."

What Ned didn't expect was that it would be this soon. The house has been in his name for barely a month, they've been out of the country for a week, and none of the listings have him at this address. But Frank isn't an idiot.

Ned knows the rules. "Is this about Sam?"

Frank's lower lip pokes out and he doesn't respond, so Ned steps out toward him, pulls the door closed behind and stands between Frank and their house.

"If you need to talk to Nancy you can call later."

He can't think about what he's saying. If he thinks about it he'll punch Frank in the mouth and the cops will be called and lawyers will be consulted. Because it won't end there. The holly bushes look like they'd be painful.

And he can feel her behind him, safe in the house, the warm glow of her presence. Were they alone... but they won't be alone. He can't trust himself alone with this man.

"She won't stay with you."

He wants to laugh in the younger man's face, but he shoves it back down and manages to keep his expression impassive. "Oh?"

Frank shakes his head. Dogged. Determined. This is the red-hot backbone lent him by drink and rage, too many hours spent thinking about it in lonely blue-lit hotel rooms. "She'll realize the mistake she's made and come back to me. You know that."

Ned just tilts his head. He's hanging on by his fingernails.

Then Frank's hand sweeps up and Ned moves to block it without blinking. Frank might spend his days chasing down spies and traitors, but Ned spends hours at the gym every week, and the muscles rippling under his flesh are hard, toned. He'd never use the gun in his back pocket, but if they were both straight and sober, it would be the only edge he'd have.

Frank's brow knits and Ned suddenly knows that he _wants_ Frank to try something. He shoves the other man's fist away, hard.

_You never made her come._

With that, it clears, and he can take a breath and step back from the edge of it, in his head. It's horrible, it burns in his mouth like guilty gleeful knowledge, a playground taunt, a blackened knife between the ribs, but he can breathe again.

"When did you start fucking my wife?"

This is the end of it, this is the beginning of it. Carson sat Ned down after the papers had all been drawn up and explained to him just what he could and couldn't do. Custody arrangements and alimony are already in order, sealed and signed, and he knows the careful path he has to walk to make sure that never changes, that he never makes Frank come between Nancy and her daughter.

"You don't really want—"

He doesn't even have it out before Frank lifts his palm and shoves the heel of his hand against Ned's chest, and in less helplessness than surprise he falls back, his shoulder blades striking the door.

"You fucking coward."

"Yeah, I am."

Ned has a temper. Ned's always had a temper. While she was lost to him he'd made no effort to curb it. Now it flares, bright and white-hot, and he doesn't care what he says as long as it hurts.

"Because I'm the one who slept with someone else's girlfriend. What, were you so bad that seeing her again—"

"Oh? Who slept with someone else's _wife,_ here?"

Ned's hand curls into a fist and he can't relax it. "Sounds like what you want to do right now. Hate to tell you, but she's had her fill tonight. She's not interested."

"Say what you want, Nickerson, but she married me. She _chose_ to marry me."

"She _chose_ to marry the man who knocked her up. She _chose_ to leave you. Cry all you want, but you aren't the reason we broke up before, and you won't be the reason we ever will. You don't_count_ in her life anymore, and if not for Sam, I'd be glad to never see you again."

"Same here," Frank snarls. "But if she left me, she's going to leave you. I know, I know that she, that you snuck around, fucking her behind my back, convincing her to leave me, and she'll just—"

"Find someone else? In two or three years, when she realizes she's stuck with a roommate instead of a husband, raising her child all by herself? Maybe she will. And I guess you'll be right there to pick up the pieces, won't you."

"I'll _be_ that man."

The words are barely out of Frank's mouth before Ned's fist is curving up, and Frank deflects it, but barely. Barely. His better angels in their dim voices say that this is a good thing, that he needs to step back, but the rest of him is screaming for retribution, for repayment in blood.

"You think all you have to do is write a check," Ned says, and his voice is starting to shake. "Buy Sam a doll, throw a few burgers on the grill and disappear for another month or two. You fucking asshole, you thought you could take my entire world away from me and just walk away. If you so much as—"

"Come on, keep going," Frank taunts. "I like to hear that. My lawyer will like to hear that when we talk about who has primary custody of my daughter."

It's not fair, that this can make him bleed. He can imagine Nancy's face on hearing about this, he can imagine the way her expression will shutter. The flat of his palm finds the cool pane of glass in the door and he draws in a breath until his chest is tight.

"I don't care," Ned mutters. "God. Do you think I didn't want to do this? That I didn't want to come pound on your door and beg her to come to her senses? Even though I hate you? It wasn't enough that you took her away from me, but then I found out that you made her miserable, that you couldn't even make her happy. I am going to wake up _every single morning_ and make sure she never thinks twice about marrying me, that when Sam comes home from school with her report cards and valentines and permission slips that I'm here to see them—"

At that Frank lets out a cry of pure rage, and Ned delights in it, savors it, even while he wants to shove his hand over the other man's mouth and keep him from waking Nancy.

"You'll never be her father," Frank says, and his eyes are glazed and gleaming. "I'm never going to let her forget who her father is, you son of a bitch. And if you lay a hand on her—"

Ned raises his eyebrows. "I don't take what isn't mine," he says softly.

Frank chuckles, dark, sarcastic. "That's rich, coming from you."

Ned studies the younger man for a moment. "We're stuck in each other's lives for the next thirteen years. The only reason I'm holding myself back right now is because of all the trouble it would cause Nancy, and Sam. Otherwise I'd put you in the hospital right now."

"I'd like to see you try."

Ned lifts an index finger. "Walk off a cliff, I won't stop you. Join a monastery, become a Masai warrior. Move to the moon. I don't give a damn. Make my wife upset, come between her and her child, upset Sam, and I swear to God, thirteen years won't give you long enough to run, because I will find you. You get a freebie tonight. You tried. You came out here and did what I never dared to do."

"Because you didn't have the balls, because you knew—"

"Because for as long as I thought she was happy, that was more important," Ned says softly. "Her and her daughter. You've tried and it's over."

Frank shakes his head again, his jaw set. "Not until I hear her say it."

Ned holds his left hand up, palm in, ring gleaming. "She already has," he says. "Come around again, like this, and I'll just have Carson call you and talk to you about the meaning of custody arrangements and supervised visits."

"I'm not leaving until she talks to me."

But Ned can see Frank's resolve breaking, as the tide of the liquor peels back and leaves only the desperation behind. "Frank—"

"Go home."

It's only then that Ned registers the open air at his back. Nancy stands with her arms crossed over her chest, in a thick towel of a robe, just behind him, her hair pulled into a messy ponytail and her cheeks flushed.

"Nancy." The change in Frank's face would be heartbreaking, to anyone else. "I just need to talk to you—" he darts a glare at Ned— "alone."

Nancy shakes her head firmly. "If you're here about Sam, we can talk, all three of us. But if you're not, you need to go home."

"It's... it's about Sam," Frank mutters. "But I don't want to talk in front of him."

Only Ned can hear her sigh. She walks forward until she's at Ned's side, reaches for his hand, her thumb stroking the band on his finger. "I'll be right inside," she promises, her voice low. "Give me a minute."

Ned wants to protest. He wants to be an ass, he wants to drag her back inside, pull the curtains up and fuck her against their front door until she screams, with Frank listening, listening until he'll never be able to forget it.

"All right."

He squeezes her hand, not hard enough to hurt, but he lingers for a long moment before he can force himself to step backward, to go back inside. "Just for a minute."

She nods, and smiles, reaching up to cup her husband's jaw in her hand before she steps away, and it's almost better.

And Ned listens, he has to listen. He sits cross-legged on the bare hardwood floor in front of their door and the sound carries through the window too easily, he has to remember that. He leans forward with his palms against the chilled wood and makes his breath almost silent.

"When are you going to..."

"If the next words out of your mouth are not 'bring Sam to visit me,' I'm going back inside."

"Don't go back inside."

Ned can feel Frank touching her wrists, the backs of her hands, because that's what he would do, and his vision goes hot and red. "Frank, I mean it. We just got back from our honeymoon. Sam's with me for the next two weeks. Why did you get me out of bed?"

In the face of her impatience and brisk dismissal, Frank fumbles. "You didn't have to do this."

"Do what?"

"I would have changed, _everything_, for you," he says, emphasizing every word. "You didn't have to leave me like this. You didn't have to go and find a new... someone else, to bring into her life."

"We've already talked about this," she sighs. "A thousand times. I'm not with Ned to get back at you. I'm not going to keep Sam from ever seeing you again. I'm not doing this to see how far you'll go to get me back. I'm not coming back to you, tonight, tomorrow, or ever. I understand you're here for me if I ever need to talk, but Frank... my loyalty and my first responsibility is—"

"To him now," Frank finishes, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

"To _our daughter_," she snaps in return, and her eyes are probably sparking blue fire by now. "To our daughter and my husband, and I know the history we have but for the love of God, I'm not here for you as a drunk dial or a guilt-fuck."

"Is that how he got you?"

She sucks in a swift breath. "Are we done here?"

"We can't be done. We have a daughter. I just want what's best for her, and her living in the same house with him," Frank spits, then trails into incoherence.

"Yes?" Nancy says innocently. "Her living in the same house with her mother's husband, who has provided for her and cares about her and would never, ever hurt her. Look past your stupid pride, Frank. You've known Ned practically as long as I have."

"And I didn't expect him to steal you, either."

"I'm sure he feels the same way about you," Nancy returns, and Ned smiles, even though his chest feels tight and sick. "And I'm not a possession to be stolen, either. We're not going to forget what we had and I don't want you to forget what we didn't have, either. We had a night that neither of us ever wanted to acknowledge, that turned into a daughter and four years of a marriage, when you spent maybe a tenth of it giving a damn about me."

"But—"

"There is no _but._ I have been putting up with this pissing contest between the two of you for too long. You're not a bad guy, Frank."

"And I didn't force you to do anything," Frank says, so low Ned can barely hear him. "I didn't force you to marry me, so don't try to make me look like an ogre here. And I... I do, still..."

She waits until he trails away. "You didn't force me to do anything," she agrees, softly. "And I didn't force you to do anything." He can almost hear her tilt her head. "What do you want me to say?"

"That I'm better," Frank mumbles. "That you made a mistake and we were meant to be together and all this time apart has just shown you how much you want to be a family again."

"I can't lie and kiss it all better," she says. "Frank... this, we, weren't supposed to happen, not like this. We could have done candlelight dinners and walks in the moonlight and chasing down smugglers until we were old and grey and married to other people, but this..."

"So Sam was a mistake."

Her voice softens. "Sam was never a mistake. Sam is the best thing you ever gave me, and I won't forget that. Go back to Bayport and sleep it off, go shoot pool with Joe and have a couple shots with Chet and soon Sam will be at your door with her Barbie suitcase, and you can take her to the zoo and the carousel, for ice cream and root beer floats. This... what we have now, this is not the mistake, and you need to sleep."

"While you're with him."

"I'm going to be with him for a long time," she sighs. "The sooner you realize that, the better it'll be for all of us."

"Don't you ever wonder?"

Ned can feel the door move slightly when she rests her palm against it. "I don't have to wonder," she replies, the exhaustion creeping back into her voice. "I have what I've wanted, and that's all I want for you. To find what you've wanted."

Ned pushes himself up, to the side so his silhouette doesn't break the square of light, his legs tingling.

"Don't tease me."

She touches his shoulder and there is no warmth in it. "I never have."

\--

When she comes back inside Ned's chewing his lip so hard she's surprised it's not shining red with blood. She touches his closed fist and he doesn't flinch back, but he almost does.

She says his name, defeated, and their gazes both go distracted as the car door finally slams outside. They're alone, again. At breakfast Sam will be fluttering around the house, waving coloring books and demanding repeated watchings of her favorite movies, filling this new house with laughter. For now it's so quiet that she can feel her heart beating, and the cool detachment she could maintain with her ex-husband is gone. She can never do enough penance, never tell the beads enough times. The belief that she and Ned could ever move past it is a pathetic fallacy.

_It's not,_ something inside her hisses stubbornly. _This time it wasn't a shotgun wedding. We knew what we were doing._

They've been together almost a year and a half. And maybe it's just her insecurities but she can feel the wound start bleeding anew every time Ned sees Frank, every time he knows that she sees Frank.

_This has to stop._

"Come to bed," she whispers, touching his hand one last time, and he moves a half-step away from her, and the contact is broken.

"Go ahead," he says, and his voice is rough, distracted. "I'll be there in a minute."

She doesn't let her face fall. She turns away and crosses her arms over her chest and strains to hear him follow, but he doesn't. She leaves the door open as she numbly takes off her clothes and slides into bed, hoping he'll sense her willingness, her need for reconciliation, as he has so many times before. But the bedsprings don't creak, announcing his weight; the floorboards do. Then she hears the metallic shushing of the patio doors, and she rolls onto her back, staring at the blind height of the ceiling.

_This is our honeymoon._ Her eyes start burning.

_How dare he fuck up our honeymoon._

There has been no third in their bed. He never told her, back at the beginning, never dwelt on her sexual inadequacies, but she could sense that he almost delighted in them. The things she didn't know, had never experienced before him, and the things Ned taught her, were legion. Frank had taught her to lie on her back and wait. She'd almost thought there was something wrong with her, that the act brought her no pleasure. She'd almost been relieved.

With Ned, she had only been shocked at her appetite, how incredibly natural and right and powerful that connection still was, despite the years and the irrevocable, undeniably horrible choice she had made. And he'd felt it too, Ned had felt it too, she could read it in his face, his eyes, the shock and grateful awe in which he held her. He'd fucked everything that had two legs and a slit between over the years, to get back at her, but from the moment she walked back into his life for good, he's never looked back.

She can't afford to have him look back. This week, this entire week, everything has been perfect, golden, and now, on this last night, her thighs still aching from the press of his hips, her husband is outside and she's alone in their bed, miserable and powerless, and the bitter taste of it is too familiar for her to stomach.

She sets her mouth and puts her robe back on, and leaves the warmth of their bed for a second time, to defend yet again what she's claimed for her own.

Ned is out on the back deck, in a wrought-iron chair. For a fleeting moment, too brief to even fully articulate, she remembers another dark head, wreathed in the fine wisps of cigarette smoke, but that memory, with so many others, is fading by the day. Her feet are bare and Ned has to have heard her push open the sliding doors, but he doesn't look up. She pulls another chair up, just to the right of his abstracted gaze, and waits until she can't anymore.

"I'm sorry."

He gives her a faint, tight, one-shouldered shrug, and the moonlight hits a jumping vein in his temple. She goes cold and mute, and has to keep mentally chanting _i will not go back to bed alone i will not go back to bed alone_ to stop the impulse, to stop herself from going back to bed and pulling the covers over her head and convincing herself that it's just another bad dream. She's almost scraped up enough bluffed indignation to break her silence when he opens his mouth.

"I can't even be mad at you right now."

His voice wavers with the tension and he still isn't looking directly at her, but the fist in the pit of her stomach is just a little less tight.

"Everything—" he glances at her, one rapid shift of his eyes to her face, before he's staring into the distance again, "Everything you said to Frank out there... was the right thing. But, I swear to God... I've _been_ where he is right now, thinking that just five minutes with you would bring you back to me. I _hate_ him, because I remember feeling that weak and not being able to do a damn thing about it. I hate that until Sam's eighteen I can't make sure you don't see him." When she opens her mouth to protest, her brows instantly knit, he raises a palm. "No. That's not... it's not that. _I_ want him gone. I want him as far away from here as he could possibly be. I want him out of our lives, out of Sam's life. And it's selfish, and cruel, and it's not because I don't trust you. I think that whatever... happened, whatever was between you and Frank, it's over now, no matter what he thinks. But I've felt this way about him for a long time now, and it took everything I had not to beat the shit out of him tonight. Because I knew that would jeopardize Sam. And you'd never forgive me."

"I might forgive you for smacking Frank around a little," she admits, her mouth curving up a little. "But Sam... you're right. I can't take any risks when it comes to her."

Ned returns her smile, faintly. "So I guess I'll have to find some other way to deal with my frustration."

"I think I can help," she teases. "But inside. It's too cold out here."

She listens for the sound of the lock engaging as he follows. In their bed he unloads the gun and she hears every bullet fall into his palm before he puts it back into the safe. Then there's the rustle of denim and his jeans have joined her robe, and she trades the tenuous cold of their bed for the warmth of his flesh against hers.

"Are we all right?"

"Yeah," he murmurs. She can feel each individual fingertip as he traces his hand over her bare back, and she nestles in close. This, being so close to him, has never gotten old for her. Then he rolls her onto her back, to face him, his body arched over hers in the dark, and he's still.

"What," she breathes, cupping his cheek in her palms, her thumbs finding the line of his jaw. He shakes his head and her fingers slide up to tighten in his hair as he leans down to her, his mouth against her shoulder, the hollow of her collarbone, while his legs slide between hers.

"I don't know what we're gonna do when I can't jump you every time I feel like it," she says, her voice low, and when Ned chuckles into her skin she arches. She's too attuned to him, too easily wet, and they've lost the foreplay, for now. She just wants him, nakedly, and it's a relief not to have to pretend otherwise, not to limit herself to the brush of their fingers under the table at a meal or the promise of an arched eyebrow when their gazes meet.

"We have to be awake for Sam tomorrow," he reminds her, stroking her thighs gently as he kneels between. "Otherwise I'd see if we could break our record."

"Which one?" she asks throatily, and is rewarded with his snicker in the dark. As though they will ever have the time again for him to make her come five times without stopping, she thinks, and at that she has to grab his hips and tug him to her, impatient, every nerve tingling at the memory of it.

"Is this what being married is like?" The slide of his cock between her thighs is agonizingly slow, and she tilts her head back, her shoulders tensed, panting.

"For you," she manages, propping herself up on her elbows and thrusting her hips forward, to the reward of his awed gasp, "for now, yes."

"What about later?" He's almost settled into his rhythm when he suddenly pulls out of her, and before she can smack him in frustration, he practically picks her up and positions her on all fours in front of him. She blows her bangs out of her eyes, her ass up in the air, and then he holds her hips as he slides inside her again.

For a moment she can only groan in pleasure. "We start working long hours and hating the sight of each other," she says, her pitch rising and falling in time with his thrusts. "And, Ned, oh fuck, please..."

"I like the sound of _that_," he growls, and she can feel his breath against her ear and she shivers. He cups her heavy breasts, thumbs flicking against her tight nipples, and she can only endure so much before she takes one of his hands and leads it between her legs, already feeling like she's three seconds from her release.

Then he's fondling her nipple and clit in time with his thrusts and she's panting, whimpering at the top of her voice, and the feel of his mouth against her shoulder blades sends another long shudder through her. "I'll never hate the sight of you," he says into her skin, the heat in his blood turning his voice harsh and rough, the desperation pounding closer in her with his every thrust. "Never."

"I love you," she moans, crying out every time she hears their hips meet, and he puts his hands over hers. She parts her knees a little further and the angle of his cock shifts inside her and she screams, slowing the counterpoint rhythm of her hips by degrees, riding every electric heartbeat of her orgasm. Her throat is dry and raw when they finally still, her arms shaking, and when she lets herself collapse he has her in his embrace.

When she gets her breath back, and it takes a long time, she sighs, then chuckles.

"What?"

She turns in his arms and cups her palm over his cheek again, and he turns his head and brushes his lips over a fingertip. "I was just thinking, if I'd known you were this good... my junior prom would have ended much differently."

"Hell. We wouldn't even have gotten out on the dance floor."

She smiles and kisses his collarbone, feeling him breathe under her. "I was meant for this," she says softly. "We were meant for this."

"I've never had any doubt about that," he replies, kissing her brow. "Just took a little longer than I expected."


End file.
